


The Rise of the Sea Devil

by Letterblade



Category: Sengoku Basara
Genre: Gen, Headcanon, Rampant Backstory Speculation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-21
Updated: 2015-07-21
Packaged: 2018-04-10 13:26:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,549
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4393610
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Letterblade/pseuds/Letterblade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Come, my friend, sit on this smoky steamship deck and let me pour you this sake straight from the mountains of Tosa. It'll burn your throat and give me time to tell you tales in peace while you cough, and then we can light it on fire when we're done. Arr, that's how we drink here on the Fugaku. So hark and all that: let me tell you the tale of how a little princess from Tosa rose up to be the ogre of the western seas.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Rise of the Sea Devil

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the [Sengoku Basara Jubilee](http://senbasajubilee.tumblr.com/) on Tumblr. For Van, and all our gloriously rambly ask conversations from which many of these headcanons came. Because yeah, this is pretty much a headcanon dump.

Come, my friend, sit on this smoky steamship deck and let me pour you this sake straight from the mountains of Tosa. It'll burn your throat and give me time to tell you tales in peace while you cough, and then we can light it on fire when we're done. Arr, that's how we drink here on the Fugaku.

I am Captain Kosokabe, samurai of Tosa, a retainer at times to the Chosokabe family, and I once wore fine-pleated black and knelt on mats with the rest of them in the old Oko Castle, many years ago. And let me tell you, it was shit. Oh, we all pretended very hard that it wasn't. But everybody knew the family was a little smudge of fine lacquer over a pile of straw and rotting fish.

Because let me tell you, back then? We were _poor_. Poor and hemmed in and holding on by our fingertips. This was long before the Chosokabe held all of Shikoku—well, all but the Oracle's lands, and we _could_ take those if we wanted to, I swear, aniki just…ah, never mind. Iyo is Iyo. At any rate. Back then, the Chosokabe family held one little wedge of rocky mountains facing nothing but the empty sea, and we had: fish. Fish and strong sailors and sake even shittier than what you're choking on right now. But mostly fish. And the Chosokabe family was in decline. Everyone knew it! The old lord's wife had only managed one son, the cousins were scattered and contentious, and that son, well.

The little princess, they called him. Himewakako. He was tall, certainly, but tall like a weed, and with how much he hunched into himself like a scared cat, it barely even showed. Pale and white-haired like an invalid who never saw the sun, shy, cowardly, no hand for swordplay. His father kept him from battle out of fear for his life, and that, _that_ was to be our new lord? This scrawny boy who wrapped himself in his mother's old furisode from the closet and never looked anyone in the eye? He was more magpie than samurai, hoarding what few treasures the family owned and sketching strange beasts with charcoal long into the night. Waiting for the fires of war to consume him.

Haah, looking back, seeing how he's grown, a man's gotta ask himself how much of that was truly his fault. Whether his cowardice was a flaw in his character or a habit ingrained after years of shirking past hisses of _princess_ in the halls of that musty old castle. A sentimental thing of me to say, perhaps, but we're a more sentimental bunch than we look, you know, you're gonna learn that well tonight. But back then, oh, we hated him. This world is what it is. Someday the next tiger or dragon or demon or gorilla or child of the sun would make his way to the far side of Shikoku, or our two-bit despot neighbors would break our border lines, and a princess who couldn't swing a sword would be our only defense. And so we blasphemed our loyalty and muttered against him in the night.

Drink, my friend. Sake is good for the confessions of our sins.

* * *

Now me, back then. Me, I knelt in my fine-pleated black on special occasions, and the rest of the time I stripped down in the salt spray and sweated in the sun on my fishing boat and spat curses back and forth with my sons-of-bitches. We all did. The calluses on our hands more from sail-ropes than war. There ain't anything special about me, now or then, except that I captained one of the bigger boats in Tosa Bay. Big enough to serve as a warship in a pinch, and me and my boys had been in a few skirmishes against the other clans that were still kicking around back then. Not gonna say we didn't do a spot of plundering, from time to time. Not gonna say I didn't brag about it to the other retainers, from time to time. Guy's gotta get by how he can.

Which is probably why, one morning, a stranger showed up insisting on joining my crew. Or at least we all pretended very hard he was a stranger. Only so many white-haired boys that tall in Tosa. But there he was, hair tied back, all in black with two swords on his belt like a proper soldier. Standing stiff and awkward and calling himself Yoshida Makoto like a goddamn genius. Said he was of age and wanted to apprentice as a sailor, and that was all he managed to stammer out in this low gruff voice that sounded like he was about to strain something. As if nobody could recognize their damn little princess if he just put on pants. Later I figured out that he'd straight-up ran away from home to join my crew. Would've been flattering, if it wasn't just because I had a big ship and an eye for other vessels' cargo.

Do I tell his secrets? Ha! I tell this to all his friends. The One-Eyed Dragon and his eye, the wandering Maeda peacock—word of wisdom, my friend, never get his monkey drunk. The Dark King, that sunny little runt we put in a net all those years ago—yeah, we'd need a bigger net these days. The Oracle thought it was all very sweet, the Beast didn't let me get a word in edgewise—but oh, his own tales were worth it. The Queen of Crows needed no telling, and that is all I dare tell of _her_. Mark my words, our big brother has a lot of friends.

So yes, I tell his secrets, and I tell mine. And with everything I say, remember that I myself captain the Fugaku when our lord's ashore, by his grace, and that I'd follow him into hell and back—hell, pretty much did when we threw in against the Oda. I'd sail with him off the edge of the world itself. Our big brother has a lot of friends, and he earned every one. With damn hard work.

Did I take him on board, back then when he first came to me? Yeah. Yeah, I did. I humored him. I didn't expect him to make anything of it, but well, he was our Himewakako, _somebody_ had to keep an eye on the brat, and I was, even then, technically, his. Would've probably had to spill my guts if he'd died on my watch. I didn't tell the other retainers, I didn't tell his family. Not worth the trouble. I just indulged him. And if our princess really _had_ felt the need to try to run away and make something of himself—who was I to stop him?

Even if most of what he made of himself, at first, was a poor sailor. I told the crew to treat him like one of us, if gentler as appropriate to his secret station. Let him think he'd gotten away with his new life. He growled and flushed as the boys barked at him to get into shape, bent his head—and worked harder. Worked until he passed out in a coil of rope on the deck with his big feet sticking out one end. Grit his teeth and learned to climb, realized he loved it up in the rigging. Figured out how to string up a sail faster than any other boy I've taken on, and looking back, that was our first real hint of his knack for how things go together. But nothing else special about him. Except determination. And the way he scooted over and offered half his bowl of rice—after a hard day's work and with his arms burning sore from his muscles finally coming in—to a shipwrecked fisherman he'd insisted we throw a line to.

He could have stopped growing then. Been a weedy, soft-hearted inventor. But he had a lot to prove. And that wasn't a time when anyone could sail around Shikoku without trouble.

* * *

The Motoyama clan's nobody these days. At least not under that name. There, see that fellow doing a caskstand with the other sons-of-bitches over there? He was their second son. Would've been their head, before he figured his best option was surrendering to our big brother. The Dark King hasn't been the only fellow to take that path, let me tell you. But anybody who thinks that kindness makes our lord weaker, not stronger, has their head screwed on backwards. Try telling someone with Ishida at their call that they're weaker for it, I dare you.

Anyway. Back then—back then, oh, the Motoyama were a force to be reckoned with, and not the kindest men to fall to. So when we saw those orange banners on fast warships rounding the mountains as we dragged our nets far out from shore, you bet your ass we turned green. Battened down the hatches and started sailing like the demons of the fourth hell were on our asses, 'cause they were. Our little princess clung to the rigging wondering what all the fuss was about, cleating and releasing lines as I barked orders in fear, until an arrow grazed his shoulder and he dropped to the deck with a scream. I bellowed for someone to guard him, I remember, as the grappling hooks hit our railing. That would be that, I thought. I lose our princess here at sea, and the Chosokabe die with him in my shame. Only a matter of time. He rolled on the deck and quavered, clutching his shoulder, looking at his hand like he'd never seen his own blood.

His first guard fell, and he shook the man's body like a grieving child, desperate. Shouted at him to wake up, as I stepped in, sword in hand, to protect him. Hey, hey see this one, all down my leg, this messy motherfucker? Got that from jagged Motoyama steel that day. It sent me reeling—bells in my head, you know, thought I wasn't going to make it. Also the orange asshole standing over me yelling for me to _drop to my knees and die, you Chosokabe bilge rat._ That didn't exactly help my morale.

And then. And _then_ , my friend, just when I thought I was at death's door, I heard a crackle of flame and a roar like a demon straight out of hell. And Himewakako launched himself past me and slammed into the man with his battle aura burning like a bonfire.

We hadn't even known he had one.

 _Don't you dare_ , he screamed, as the man who'd cut me open staggered back against a railing aflame and screaming. _Don't you dare hurt him! Get off my ship! Get off get off get off!_

It wasn't _the_ most dignified battle cry, looking back on it, but well, the smoke boiling off his skin made his point loud and clear. He was in a rage, a terrible, glorious rage. The sort that gives men strength like they've never known before.

Strength enough to pick up the ship's anchor itself from the deck, chain thick as his arms clattering against his shins as he roared, flames licking over iron as he brandished it before him like a fell beast.

 _A devil_ , croaked one of the Motoyama toadies as he tumbled safely back over his own railing, shaking. _A devil_.

* * *

Nobody ever called him Himewakako again after that day. Not on my watch, and not to his face. The sea devil, though—that nickname began to spread, mysterious rumor, from the Motoyama army and the merchant ships we boarded alike.

And technically it was my ship, not his, but after that, I didn't raise _too_ much fuss about the peasant sailor Yoshida Makoto making suggestions about what to do. Especially when he did something to my rigging which made my ship a third again as fast. But most of his suggestions, back then, were piracy. Piracy that swept up one ship after another, as every vassal captain cottoned on to the idea, with implicit permission from our little prince swaying in my rigging. Piracy that took us far from Chosokabe waters, but his newfound daring was infectious. We roared. We pillaged. We struck fear.

We never killed civilians. Not even then. _C'mon_ , our secret prince muttered, elbowing me. _We can be cooler pirates than that._

There was a morning that one of my deckhands came up to me, a little stunned, mumbling. Just thought y'might want to know, sir—oh, he was a chronic foot-shuffler, that one. Even worse than our lord. It turned out "Yoshida" had loaded up every bit of his cut he'd gathered since the start of the whole business onto a longboat, the last time we touched down in Tosa, and threatened and implored him to take it in the greatest secrecy to Oko Castle. An anonymous donation to the Chosokabe family coffers.

There was a night that our "Yoshida" was deep in his cups, and some of the younger crewman were trading stories of woe, and he blurted out, long-faced, that he'd run away from his family. That he'd never be able to be what they wanted him to be, or follow all their traditions, or be a proper— _family member person thing_ , he mumbled as he caught himself back from _lord_ at the last moment. But he'd wanted to make something of himself, do something for the family, anything at all. He wasn't too coherent by the end of it, gotta admit. I think that was the first time I heard anyone call him aniki. When one of the orphan deckhands, flat on his back from drink, said that this crew was family, this crew was more than family, I love you all, man.

It stuck.

We started finding a lot of excuses to give him a big cut.

* * *

The campaign against the Motoyama, though—that happened almost by accident. It's not like we were planning conquest in those days! How would we even raise an army? Whose flag would we even plant—the Chosokabe who aged liver-spotted up on his cushion in the rotting old castle or the Chosokabe who crouched on my deck knotting rope and pretended to be a lost peasant? No, we were surviving. Drunk on power from piracy, but not even a bit player in the game of provinces that mowed down men beyond our borders. So we thought.

The Motoyama trade with Kyushu—that was all we wanted to plant our flags on, and by our flags I mean our once-empty coffers. But the Motoyama army started running escorts and blockades, and one thing led to another, and, well. You ever seen a war start by accident, my friend? A little provincial war, but a war nonetheless? It wasn't an easy one. No, it was a godforsaken mess.

At first we made terror strikes, distractions, just trying to get at our booty. And by terror strikes I mostly mean our aniki crouched on the prow like a demon, wreathed in flame with the great big anchor-spear he'd put together after that first fight. The sea devil and his pirate horde were a mystery then. Nobody knew whose land we hailed from, or whose noble blood lead us—for the pretense that he wasn't our leader was fast fading, now that he had a fleet to swarm targets at his whim.

But then the Motoyama started making coordinated strikes in return. And they were brutal. War butchers. Our days became bloody, grim. Our big brother wept his guts out in the night over men left dead on pikes as warnings. Because rumors had spread. That Oko Castle was funding the pirates. That the Chosokabe heir lurked somewhere in the fleet. And the Motoyama were turning this into a war of samurai, not pirates. Began to hem us in, pick us off. Play devil all we like—and we did, fighting fear with fear and less torment as best we could—we weren't an army.

Until our big brother swallowed his pride and made us one. Sent out his parrot—of course he'd gotten a parrot—to call all the ships together, and stood up on my forecastle pale and grim with a white banner rolled in his hands.

 _I lied to you_ , he said, and the men stirred like the sea. _I'm sorry. I'd have run from this forever, if I could. I just wanted to be your shipmate. I never wanted a war. Haah. I suppose a lot of people have laughed at me for that, but it's true. But now I've got one, and I need to do this—if I don't, I'm lettin' you down more, and that's something I could never live with. This war—needs something more than nameless pirates, doesn't it?_

And he threw the banner high in the wind, six-petaled wheel of black bold in the sunlight.

_I am Chosokabe Motochika!_

I stood by his side that day, and I watched his face, and let me tell you, he didn't expect the cheers. A roar with one throat, to war, to glory, to ridding our borders once and for all of those orange butchers. He gulped in surprise, reeled, scrubbed at his eyes and added, hoarse, _Damn it, you sons-of-bitches, don't get too carried away. I'm still your aniki—r-right?_

And so it was our cheers of aniki that led us to victory in our first war.

* * *

How aniki lost his eye?

No.

No, I ain't telling that tale in revelry. I ain't _speaking_ that two-timing tea-gobbling treasure-crazy _butcher bastard's_ ** _name_** _on this_ ** _deck_** _except to mourn the_ ** _dead_** —

Yeah. Pour me another. You do that.

Haah.

The stripes on his belly, though—you want a tale of woe? That old codfish, that old fucking slippery eel. Between you and me, most of the sons-of-bitches hate him near as much as we hate the other guy, but our big brother holds him as a rival, so we gotta keep our spirits up and give as good as we get.

So after we took the Motoyama to pieces, after the devil started to kindle his flames across the rest of Shikoku, we were living large. We were pumped up on victory and getting fat off the trade in and out of Chugoku, fat hauls from green-flagged boats that we could get to once we controlled more of the shoreline. It got easier after the start, y'know. The more ships we captured, the more metal we scraped up for aniki's inventions. The more men who swallowed their pride and ran up new banners on Chosokabe mercy, and then realized living free and wild at sea was better than any life they'd ever known. We were startin' to cheer his name. We were startin' to sparkle.

And then, as we ventured round yet another rocky island into the Seto Sea, a thousand green-fletched arrows thudded to our deck like rain.

It was a hell of a fight. Damn, I wish I could tell it better. I was pasted to our flagship's wheel, maneuvering through the tightest naval battle I'd yet sailed through. Three Mori warships shouldn't even have given us that much trouble, but damn weren't they maneuverable, lighter in the wind than our heavy cruisers, and—well. Mori. That okra-hatted bastard had them sailing suicide close, boxing us in with their very hulls, all pawns in his game. Oh, if you weren't a friend, I'd tell you we blew those grasshoppers out of the water, sent them running with their tails between their legs because they were stupid enough to underestimate the grass-chewing jumpstarts from hicksville. But that'd only be a pretty story, thick with sake and lies.

Our aniki charged in straight for the man on top, of course. That's how he is. Ask that fellow getting emptied out over the railing if you want the blow-by-blow of the fight, I was sailin'. But it was a fierce one. I could hear the explosions somewhere over my head, the ogre's bellow and the roar of flames to go with it. I could hear the sons-of-bitches who had a better sight of it groan and scream as one with some decisive blow. Hear our little princess' roar break on a whimper, and my gut sunk at that, let me tell you.

Both sides called the retreat. The damn eel had taken a few licks, and his pawns had been thinned enough for him to declare that it wasn't worth the risk of driving off the pirates. As for our man—

The Mori bastard had laid our big brother's guts open. His flesh charred and smoking with the heat of the sun.

I all but threw the helm at my first mate and ran to help pull him down from the high deck he'd been fighting on. His anchor was the only thing holding him up, and he was standing there bemused, like a little kid again, lost and confused, holdin' his guts in with one hand. He turned to me, shook his head like a wet dog, got halfway through mumbling that he was gonna switch something over, and passed out right on my chest like a sack of rocks.

I screamed for the surgeon. Didn't hear what he said before he gave out, and spent the next four days cursing myself that I, I of all men, might have failed in hearing my lord's last wishes.

The surgeon did his work, and the ship turned for Tosa, and every damn pirate in the island—and half the villagers—came out to escort us. They lined the shores, watched the ship with her flags half-mast, heard the messengers with the news. Our big brother breathed, sleeping deep with his belly a mass of bandages and his anchor laid at his head as if it were a proper sword, and long as he breathed, we stood watch, the quietest we'd ever been, waiting for him to come home.

The ship had laid anchor offshore of the run-down old family home itself, and his aging mother and father had punted aboard to sit with the pirates, by the time he woke. There they were, all done up in fresh-bought finery—it wasn't like they'd ever _not_ known where the s'posedly mysterious donations to the family coffers were coming from—soberly passing tiny cups of sake as my crew passed their jugs, and praying all proper-like, and we nodded in honor, and saluted in honor, but there wasn't any kneeling in fine-pleated black to be had anymore. Tosa had changed.

And they were proud.

I wasn't in the room when they told our big brother that. Though I saw him pretending very hard he wasn't sobbing tears of happiness into his pillow later. But I knew. I could see it in their eyes.

I was in the room when he woke. So little fanfare, at first just one of those little huffs and mumbles in his deep, pained sleep that I'd stopped jumping at every time. Until he squinted his eyes open, rolled his dry tongue around in his mouth a little, and croaked, _steam power. I'm switching the fleet to steam power, didn' you hear me?_ A long pause as I gaped at him like a fish, joy making my head spin and my eyes water, and then he added, _an' building bigger cannons. Why're you looking at me like that?_

When I shouted that he was awake, the massed forces of Tosa gave a roar of triumph that echoed off the very mountains themselves.

* * *

We didn't let the Mori set us back. Any more than we did the Motoyama. They'd been cruel and savage, so we became roaring devils of freedom in answer. The Mori proved calculating and resourceful, so we became plotters and engineers. Our big brother, laid up with his guts still healing closed to those red lines, scribbled and tinkered and planned so late into the night that the doctors groused and dosed him with poppy just to make him damn well _sleep_ , bringing his fever dreams to life. Mechanisms to load far bigger cannons than could ever be loaded by hand, cradles to handle the recoil without sinking the ship. Spiders wrought of iron and wood with flames burning in their bellies and death in their treads. A ship like no ship that had ever been built, big enough for trees to blossom over its decks, a floating island of a thousand demons to be a fitting home to the Sea Devil of the West.

Money set him back, and he stripped the ships he captured of everything that glittered and sent them on their way with a cheerful farewell and a toast. The eye set him back, and he gritted his teeth under the bandages on his face and sparred with me and the other men as we sent him reeling, over and over, until he learned how to sweep the anchor to cover his blind side. The rising tides of war set him back, and he laughed his way into battle, crowed like he'd been born in blood and never been a coward, and took in boat after boat of huddled refugees with not a care in the world.

And one day, as we divvied up the loot, we found a paulownia box full of the softer sort of treasures—probably headed up to that rich lady up in Anegawa. Some priceless maru obi, a whole lot of scarves, embroidered and brocaded and gossamered and every thing you can imagine. Hell if we knew what to do with it, I'm pretty sure one of the men wound up ransoming it right back to her. Who else would pay that much for that sort of thing these days? But we took our cut. We always took our cut.

Our little princess had always liked purple. Purple and sparkly shit and pretty flowers. Oh, we used to give him shit for it. But by then, we loved him. So much already that we'd all but forgotten about all that crap.  He'd become our sea devil, our pirate king, with his big black coat and his banner flying black and white over the seas he'd claimed for his family. Pretending he wasn't eyeing the prettier treasures, pretending he was an entirely different man.

See that scarf he's always got dangling around his waist? Yeah. That was the day I picked it out of the box and offered it to him as aniki's cut. And I swear I have never seen him turn more red. He shuffled, he grumbled, he stomped about not looking any of us in the eye.

You do what makes you happy, I told him that day. You've _damned_ well earned it. And you're our aniki now, whatever you do, always.

And that, _that_ , my friend, is how a little princess from Tosa rose up to be the ogre of the western seas, and how we his vassals went from laughing to cheering as he fluttered a purple scarf around his shoulders. Raise your jug! High, high! To aniki! Bottoms up!


End file.
